Sylvia,
who had been pushed aside.

"Or we might tie the frying pan and the tin billy round his neck, and
then there would be such a rattle when he fell that we should be sure to
hear and could pick him up at our leisure," said Rupert. There was a
quiet drawl in his tone which meant that his foot was more painful than
usual; but Nealie had been so occupied with her anxiety on Rumple's
account that she had little time for watching her eldest brother, who
never said a word about himself, however bad he might feel.

"I shall not do such a stupid thing again of course, but it might have
been worse," said Rumple. "This is a jolly place: no end of cows, and a
real separator; you put them in at the top, the milk I mean, not the
cows, and they come out cream one side and milk the other. Mrs. Warner
is jolly too, and oh! what do you think, she is cousin to that Mr.
Melrose who left the ship at Cape Town, and sent the cable to Mr.
Wallis."

By the time Rumple had managed so much of explanation the horse and
wagon had halted outside the cowyard, and Mrs. Warner came rushing out
to greet the arrivals.

"I am really glad to see you; we don't get many visitors in these lonely
places, you know, and so company is always a treat. I am afraid that you
must have been rather scared when you found your brother was missing,
but when he was able to tell us how it all happened we sent off a notice
to be stuck up at the side of the road as soon as possible."

"It was most kind of you to be so thoughtful," said Nealie. "Only the
trouble was that we had found out Rumple was missing, and we had come
back on our tracks, right past the place where the notice was posted,
and we had nearly reached the cutting where they are going to make the
railway. We halted there, because we knew that when we passed that place
before Rumple was with us, and after we had been there about half an
hour a man came riding up from the way we had come, and he asked what
was the matter that we were so down on our luck; so we told him that one
of our brothers was missing, and then he said that he had seen a notice
up at the Four-Mile Corner, that stated a boy had been found lying in
the road, and had been taken to Warner's Farm, in the Holderness Valley,
but he was not hurt."

"I had that bit put to keep you from being scared," said Mrs. Warner,
nodding her head in a vigorous fashion. "I guessed that you would be
feeling pretty bad, and so I just told Tom to put it i